Mulch, mulch & more mulch

Had a tree taken out a week or so ago. It was leaning a bit close to the house and dropping litter in the gutters, so it had to get the chop. The contractors were to chip it all up and had agreed that I could have the mulch. I was looking forward to a useful half-dozen barrowloads but when they arrived their truck was filled to the brim with the remains of their previous job. So I got that too.

About 10 cubic metres of the stuff. “It’s been in the truck all weekend”, he said. “It’s warming up.” Warming up! I could’ve hard-boiled eggs in it. It’d already started to char in the truck and parts of it were black. There followed a hectic rest of the day as I barrowed it in from the naturestrip and tried to get the pile spread out and reduced to a safely cool size.

In the end it didn’t catch fire and over 100 barrowloads later I’m still going and reckon I’ve moved about three quarters of it. The entire food forest area will be covered to a useful depth of 3″ and then some.

I’m really pleased because I’d concentrated on putting what mulch I could gather around the fruit trees and other sections were exposed, bone dry and cement-like. All I need now is a good shower of rain to wet the soil underneath and the worms to come to the surface and open it all up so that further rain penetrates.